Dangerously funny videos created and produced by Rémi Gaillard. The show continues on www.nimportequi.com.

1999/2009 Remi Gaillard

thanks Miso

Jumping the Snark
by Dave Gilson
Mother Jones
November/December 2009

In an age of Yes Men, flash mobs, birthers, and fake pundits, is the prank dead?

What’s a good prank worth? How about $2 billion? That’s how much Dow Chemical’s stock value dipped in just 23 minutes on the morning of December 3, 2004, after its spokesman went on the BBC to announce that the company would make amends for the 1984 Bhopal toxic-gas disaster “simply because it’s the right thing to do.” (Dow had acquired Union Carbide, the original owner of the Bhopal chemical plant, in 1999.) Within the hour, the flack was exposed as one of the Yes Men, a duo that’s spent the past decade perfecting the art of anti-corporate trickery. The feat cemented their reputation as the world’s preeminent political pranksters (a reputation they recently reaffirmed by pranking the US Chamber of Commerce). It also proved that a punch line can occasionally pack a real punch.

The Bhopal stunt kicks off the pair’s new film, The Yes Men Fix the World, the follow-up to their self-titled 2004 movie. But don’t let the puffed-up title fool you into thinking that the Yes Men believe their hijinks are actually making the world a better place. A better title would have been The Prank Is Dead. (more…)

From Scott Beale at LaughingSquid:

The Skydiving Prank — the 8th prank in the 4 year long Prank War between CollegeHumor employees Streeter Seidell and Amir Blumenfeld.

Related links:

The Assclown Offensive: How to Enrage the Church of Scientology
by Julian Dibbell
WIRED
September 21, 2009

In the evening of January 15, 2008, a 31-year-old tech consultant named Gregg Housh sat down at the computer and paid a visit to one of his favorite Web sites, the message board known as 4chan. Like most of the 5.9 million people who visit the site every month, Housh was looking for a few cheap laughs. Filled with hundreds of thousands of brief, anonymous messages and crude graphics uploaded by the site’s mostly male, mostly twentysomething users, 4chan is a fountainhead of twisted, scatological, absurd, and sometimes brilliant low-brow humor. It was the source of the lolcat craze (affixing captions like “I Can Has Cheezburger?” to photos of felines), the rickrolling phenomenon (tricking people into clicking on links to Rick Astley’s ghastly “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video), and other classic time-wasting Internet memes. In short, while there are many online places where you can educate yourself, seek the truth, and contemplate the world’s injustices and strive to right them, 4chan is not one of them.

Yet today, Housh found 4chan grappling with an injustice no Internet-humor fan could ignore. (more…)

Submitted by Eliane Arquin:

The Net’s Most Heinous Hoaxes
by Sarah Jacobsson
PC World

We look at some of the meanest (and a few of the funniest) hoaxes on the Web.

Most online hoaxes are mildly annoying, and a few are hilarious. But propagating a false Amber Alert over Twitter? Plastering an epilepsy forum with flashing images? Not cool. We’ll take a look at some of the Web’s most heinous hoaxes over the years, and sprinkle in a handful of amusing ones.

Twitter/Facebook Amber Alert

The Amber Alert system — a child abduction alert system broadcast over radio, TV, satellite radio and other media whenever a child is abducted — was created after 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas, in 1996. Recently, some users have also broadcast alerts over text messages and Twitter.

Last July, someone tweeted an Amber Alert for a 3-year-old girl. People responded by spreading the alert as fast and as far as they could. It turned out to be a false alarm. A similar sequence of panicked, rapid-fire tweeting followed another false Amber Alert that occurred in September.

How heinous is this? Though we’re glad that no abduction occurred in either case, there’s a disturbing “cry wolf” aspect to the story — what happens the next time a real Amber Alert goes out? For eroding the value of a potentially vital line of defense against child abduction, this hoax sets the platinum standard for repugnance. (more…)

Here’s the thirty second installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly and the LitFraud blog.

LiteratEye #32: Pranks With a Novel Twist — An Interview with Elusive Wu Ming
By W.J. Elvin III
September 25, 2009

The counter-cultural creative arts collective Wu Ming, based in Italy, evolved out of the madcap Luther Blissett phenomenon (see LiteratEye #15).

Blissett scattered into a million little pieces, becoming an incredible world-wide prank epidemic. For a time it seemed everyone was doing bizarre creative “actions” and attributing them to Blissett.

Then some members of the group that launched the Blissett project morphed into Wu Ming.

Apparently they are now four culturally revolutionary Italian novelists cranking out very popular books.

Being anonymous – the name means “no name” in Mandarin – they are only identified by number, Wu Ming1 through Wu Ming5.

Right. And we just said there are four of them. Well, one of them must have dropped out. Or something. (more…)

Update submitted by W.J. Elvin, September 10, 2009: Another criminal prankster nailed…

Update submitted by W.J. Elvin III, August 27, 2009: Evil prankster arrested…

Editor’s Note: At ArtofthePrank.com, we post prank news from around the world. This news varies from the profound to the profane to the pathetic. Readers are encouraged to make their own judgement calls. This story submitted by W.J. Elvin III, as seen on The Smoking Gun, is profoundly disturbing. It’s surprising the people responsible for these pranks are not incarcerated or dead. I have my own criteria about what makes a meaningful prank. This seems like a good place to inject an article I penned a while back for the magazine Extra!, published by FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) called The Art of the Con. Joey Skaggs

Telephone Terrorist: Outing An Online Outlaw, August 4, 2009

A TSG investigation unmasks the leader of Pranknet and the miscreants behind a year-long wave of phone call criminality

At 4:15 AM on a recent Tuesday, on a quiet, darkened street in Windsor, Ontario, a man was wrapping up another long day tormenting and terrorizing strangers on the telephone. Working from a sparsely furnished two-bedroom apartment in a ramshackle building a block from the Detroit River, the man, nicknamed “Dex”, heads a network of so-called pranksters who have spent more than a year engaged in an orgy of criminal activity–vandalism, threats, harassment, impersonation, hacking, and other assorted felonies and misdemeanors–targeting U.S. businesses and residents.

Coalescing in an online chat room, members of the group, known as Pranknet, use the telephone to carry out cruel and outrageous hoaxes, which they broadcast live around-the-clock on the Internet. Masquerading as hotel employees, emergency service workers, and representatives of fire alarm companies, “Dex” and his cohorts have successfully prodded unwitting victims to destroy hotel rooms and lobbies, set off sprinkler systems, activate fire alarms, and damage assorted fast food restaurants. (more…)

Here’s the twenty ninth installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly and the LitFraud blog.

LiteratEye #29: Kidnapped by Slavers! Abducted and Tortured by Wild Savages! Worse Yet, Branded a ‘Reckless Liar’!
By W.J. Elvin III
September 4, 2009

Let’s say you had to choose, which would it be:

Abducted off the streets as a child, cast into the dingy hold of a sailing ship and, when it got filled with other unfortunates like yourself, carried off to a foreign land to be sold into slavery … or … captured by merciless wild Indians, witness to the brutal slaughter of numerous of your own people – men, women and children, and cruelly tortured for the mocking amusement of your captors?

Well, if you happen to be as lucky as Peter Williamson of Aberdeen, Scotland, back in the mid-1700s, you could have all that, plus a few other horrors and terrors for good measure.

Williamson, known later in life as “Indian Peter,” made the best of it. He wrote a book that sold well in his own day and remains an oft-quoted classic among tales of Indian captivity.

It’s quite the yarn, as some of the chapter headings indicate: (more…)

Via Baltimore Metromix, August 24, 2009:

Coming on MTV as part of the Thursday night block: “Pranked,” a 30-minute program that showcases the best pranks ever caught on camera and posted online. The hosts, College Humor.com’s prank experts Streeter Seidell and Amir Blumenfeld, provide commentary during each episode.

Promo for the new Thursday line-up:

Read a Wired.com interview with Streeter Seidell and Amir Blumenfeld here.

Visit here for more from CollegeHumor.com

From Gamezine.co.uk, August 13, 2009:

K-Mart PS3 Slim Ad proven fake in 6 steps – Neogaf forum plays prank

Cheeky Neogaf does it again, but we don’t think we’ve ever fallen for their pesky pranks.

First they created concept art for the PS3 Slim, which is now the media’s standard image for Sony’s presumed console, and now the Neogaf gaming forums have created the ads to promote it. All they have to do now is actually build it and sell it in the shops…

Today Gizmodo reported on a K-Mart promotional ad featuring a 120GB PS3 Slim, priced at $299.99. Sure, the website noted that they thought it was “shenanigans,” but now we can prove the ad is false, with Neogaf’s chubigans as the cheeky culprit. He explains his methodology (with images after this link): (more…)

Central Park ‘Undie Run’ Aims to Set World Record
1010WINS
July 26, 2009

Hundreds of runners clad only in their underwear dashed through Central Park Friday in an attempt to break a world record for the “largest gathering of people wearing underpants.”

photos: Terry Sheridan

Barrel Monster Artist Sentenced
by Shirley Min
Raleigh MyNC.com
July 21, 2009

Raleigh, N.C. – It wasn’t a political statement about ongoing construction on Hillsborough Street.

It was just some art that was meant to make people smile.

That’s what “Barrel Monster” creator Joseph Carnevale said Tuesday after appearing in a Wake County courtroom on misdemeanor larceny and destruction of property charges.

Watch the video:

(more…)

‘Bruno’ brutally funny
by Zachary Woodruff
SignOnSanDiego.com (The Union Tribune)
July 10, 2009

Baron Cohen’s latest prank scores without the cruelty of ‘Borat’

If you look up the word “prank,” among the older definitions is this one: “A trick to make people stare.” Thanks to movies like “Bruno,” comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s follow-up to “Borat,” a newer definition would have to add “or look away.” Prepare to squirm, or worse: As one of the subjects/victims in the film’s myriad setups says after falling prey to Cohen’s antics, “I wanted to poke my eyes out with hot needles.”

My own reaction also involved pain, not to the eyes so much as the stomach: “Bruno” is laugh-out-loud, sucker-punch-in-the-gut funny. With a comedic barrage of shock, irony, slapstick and ongoing discomfort, you probably won’t know what’s hit you, and you’ll likely lose your balance. Especially during a full-screen full-frontal of what in this case could appropriately be called a tallywhacker. (You’ve been warned.)

Obscenitywise, “Bruno” charts new territory. How much were members of the ratings board paid off to give this movie an “R”? (For a lesson in how far standards can sink in 20 years, look up 1990’s tame “Henry & June,” the first major NC-17 film.) But there’s intelligence and discipline behind the madness. Cohen and his collaborators, including director Larry Charles (the whiz behind “Seinfeld”), have refined their guerrilla game and learned a lesson their previous social experiment, “Borat,” lacked: That it’s enough to make fools out of people without being cruel. No need to call a man’s wife ugly at the dinner table. Let people humiliate themselves on their own. (more…)

The Art of the Prank
by Spencer Morgan
Maxim.com
June 29, 2009

From coast to coast, intrepid bands of merrymakers are staging hoaxes, stunts, and practical jokes like never before. Welcome to the Golden Age of the Prank.

This is for participants only,” announces a heavily bundled Charlie Todd through his trusty gray bullhorn. “If you didn’t come to take your pants off today, you’re in the wrong spot.” It’s a frigid January afternoon in New York City’s Foley Square, and hundreds of fearless pranksters are braving the elements to get together and shed their trousers for the eighth annual “No Pants! Subway Ride.”

Todd, a baby-faced 30-year-old from Columbia, South Carolina, is the mastermind behind this gathering, and on his command the assembled crowd scatters for the nearest subway entrances…and collectively drops trou. Even in a city like New York, riding the subway sans pants is a guaranteed eye-opener, and today is no exception: Straphangers stare, chuckle, even take photos. Around 1,200 men and women have come out clad in boxers, briefs, boxer-briefs, and bloomers, not just in New York, but in 21 cities across the globe. (“Three hundred take to the subway—shameless and pantless,” the Toronto Sun would inform its readers soberly the next day.) The mission ends with a group of agents celebrating in Union Square, making snow angels, still pantless. Improv Everywhere has struck again. Mission accomplished. (more…)

Serial streakers, uncovered
by Brad Wheeler
The Globe and Mail
July 4, 2009

Exactly what motivates someone to strip down to a well-placed sock, burst onto a sports field and try to outrun the cops? A new documentary reveals all. Jump – The World’s Greatest Streakers airs Saturday (6 and 11) on CBC’s Documentary channel, previewing free this month for subscribers to digital and satellite services.

You’re watching a sportscast when suddenly there’s a stop in the action and the crowd is aroused. You can’t see what’s going on, because most networks won’t show the farce playing out on field of play: It’s a “streaker” or a “jumper” or whatever you wish to call an uninvited guest thrusting themselves into the proceedings, usually by running around until security or police catch up to them.

These events are often impromptu – an in-the-moment prank instigated by booze – but there are those who take this fun seriously, or at least put some thought into it. Jump The World’s Greatest Streakers, a documentary directed by Montrealers Dan Emery and Jon Deitcher, and Vancouver-based Mathieu Wacowich, which airs tonight on Documentary, focuses on an eccentric Catalan who calls himself “Jimmy Jump,” most recently noticed for his (fully clothed) stunt involving a flag and Roger Federer during the French Open tennis final in early June.

The documentary concerns itself with the hidden world of serial streakers, including Mark Roberts, a lark-loving Liverpudlian who’s gone naked at some 400 big-time sporting events over 16 years. I spoke to the run-amok Roberts about his full-monty motivations and why he gets shirty over guys like Jimmy Jump, who won’t take their pants off. (more…)